Echinochloa polystachya

Echinochloa polystachya, the German grass, is a species of grass (family Poaceae), native to the New World Tropics and Subtropics, from Texas and Florida down to Argentina. It is an aquatic or semi-aquatic perennial that can grow in water as deep as 2 m. It is a useful fodder for water buffaloes, and to a lesser extent, cattle. In the Amazon floodplain it can reach productivity levels of 99.6 t/ha in dry mass, one of the highest levels ever measured in natural vegetation and belongs to the C4 plants. Given that it occupies about 200,000 km2 of territory during the rainy season, it contributes on the order of 1% of the primary productivity of the planet.